A Closer Look: Interior
Once we get the side panel off via two thumbscrews, we can get a better visual of the interior of the chassis. Speaking of visuals, the paint finish is fairly thick and durable. Every edge is rounded and smooth and the black on black theme is just awesome. The included chassis fans, the expansion slot covers, and the hard drive mounting brackets all add a nice contrast with their white finish. There are several rubber grommeted holes throughout the interior to aid in cable management, which in this day and age has become a necessary and important trait amongst consumers who build their own computers.
At the bottom of the chassis we can see the mounting place for a power supply that has rubber mounting not only for the bottom of the unit, but for the rear of the unit as well. This will also reduce vibration and noise; a testament that Fractal makes careful considerations for their chassis acoustical characteristics. All of the ARC XL’s expansion slots are removable and are secured to the chassis via thumbscrews. In the upper rear section of the chassis are additional pre-installed 140mm chassis fans that will help to rid of additional heat rising to the top of the chassis. There is also room for additional chassis fans or even a radiator (up to a 360mm!) for those of you who liquid cool your system. In addition, the front of the chassis supports up to a 240mm radiator, the bottom of the chassis supports up to a 120mm radiator, and the rear supports up to a 140mm radiator.
As you can see there are two external drive bays with still enough room available to install that radiator if you wish. Located beneath the external drive bays are eight hard drive bays that may hold either a 3.5″ or 2.5″ hard drive or SSD (solid state disk). Both of these hard drive cages are removable, which comes in handy when you want to install an extra-long graphics card or additional radiators for liquid cooling. When removing the hard drive cages we find that there is also room for up to a 240mm radiator or perhaps an additional chassis fan for you hardcore air-coolers out there.
On the backside of this chassis we are treated to a clear view of the different cable management options, the large cut-out for the CPU cooler mounting bracket, the additional SSD mounting brackets as well as the front panel cables. We also discover the front panel connections for the fan controller that have a 4-pin Molex for input power and 3-pin fan connectors for output power.
Now that we have examined the interior of the ARC Mini R2, let us take a closer look at the installation of some hardware and the finished looks!
